More on finding work to do from home

Yesterday, I discussed finding work you can do from home. One of my older articles notes the clients who hire consultants. And I’ve previously warned readers about work from home scams. But I still get a lot of email from people who want to know how to jump start their business and find work.

Some tips for finding work to do from home:

  1. Let your colleagues, former co-workers, friends and family know you’re looking for consulting work
  2. Ask your former employer(s) if they need any help
  3. Go to professional events and network with people outside your field
  4. Get listed in directories and search engines
  5. Go to events and tradeshows and meet potential clients
  6. Check Craigslist for opportunities

These are just a few ideas for finding work you can do from home.

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2 thoughts on “More on finding work to do from home”

  1. Hi!

    From my own experience of few months (about 9-10) trying to find work from home jobs/projects through Craigslist, I would like to put the given below points –

    1). Most of the jobs at Craigslist are scam promising huge unrealistic incomes of making 100’s or 1000’s dollars per day. Moreover the same ad is posted at all the Craigslist sites with little or no changes in the wordings. You will end up wasting your time seeing these scams ads which promote an ebook or some product that needs to be purchased.

    2). Even, if you find a job ad, there is very less probability of getting any response. I am an educated engineering graduate and a technically skilled Computer freelancer with years of experience in technical support, networking and system administration and writing but only got 5 – 10 % response after trying for months.

    3). Most of the telecommute jobs require some visits to the site and are US based. I live in India and thus was not able to apply for them.

    4). The pay rates for most of the jobs which looks somewhat genuine are very low and meant for exploitation. e.g,: $ 1 to $ 2 per hour for normal research and article writing job.

    From my above poor experiences of trying to find telecommute job and getting only two (both paid me for few days and then stopped payment without any notice), I would rate Craigslist as a site which is ideal for scammers, spammers and cheaters (who want to get work done for free).

    There are very less chances of getting any work from home job (at least for Indians). Since, it’s a classified site, anyone can post anything and you have to be very cautious of selecting the job ad, corresponding and then finally getting paid. Consider yourself lucky if you finally get paid for your work. Don’t send complete work without getting some advance payment. And yes, if possible, choose at least weekly payouts or payments at regular and small intervals.

    Don’t trust anyone completely and never use your day to day highly used email address as you will start getting spam after applying to these jobs at Craigslist.

    I used to search with “telecommuting is ok” keywords in Jobs section and suggest you to do the same only for big cities in Craigslist domain (as there are hundreds of them). I have now completely stopped visiting Craigslist for job hunting.

    All the best!

    Rajesh Mago

  2. Rajesh,
    Thank you for your insightful response. You are right that there are scammers on Craigslist. But there are also legitimate opportunities. Here in Vancouver, many companies post job and contract opportunities on Craigslist.

    However, as I say in my consulting fees guide, always get a deposit and a written contract.

    Andrea

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